From Kalabogi to COP31: The case for developed-nation responsibility

The village of Kalabogi sits on the Shibsa River in the Dacope sub-district of Bangladesh's southwestern coastal Khulna region. It is effectively a natural experiment: a coastal community where the effects of a changing climate can be observed not in projections but in practice—where climate change is not a forecast or a distant projection, but a daily, lived reality.

Known as a "hanging" or "floating village," Kalabogi homes stand on thatched and bamboo structures that must be relocated several times a year due to regular river erosion driven by climate change.

During my recent visit to the village, I witnessed their plight firsthand, as climate change—coupled with saltwater intrusion, frequent cyclones, and shifting weather patterns—continues to reshape their lives.

In Kalabogi and many other severely climate-vulnerable areas across Bangladesh, South Asia, and beyond, the water does not wait for conference decisions. It comes. It takes the land. It forces families to move their bamboo and tin shacks again and again—sometimes several times a year. Climate-vulnerable people in Bangladesh and elsewhere in the region and beyond do not speak the language of carbon budgets and mitigation targets. They speak the language of erosion and other climate-induced calamities. They know the rivers that once gave them fish and passage now take their homes.

As delegates gather in Antalya for COP31, the central question is not whether climate change is real. It is who bears responsibility for fixing it. The answer is unambiguous: developed nations, whose historical emissions created this crisis, must take primary responsibility. Not as charity, but as justice

The science is not complicated. Countries like the United States and the wealthy nations of Europe grew rich by burning fossil fuels. They filled the atmosphere with greenhouse gases over centuries. Bangladesh, a country of over 170 million people, contributes less than 0.5 percent of global emissions. Yet it sits on the frontlines of sea-level rise, salinity intrusion and increasingly violent cyclones. The people of Kalabogi are not responsible for the crisis swallowing their village. They are victims of a problem created elsewhere.

When a farmer in Khulna loses his land to erosion, he is paying for the industrial revolutions of Manchester and Pittsburgh. When a mother in Dacope struggles to find safe drinking water because of salinity intrusion, she is bearing the cost of decades of emissions from factories and automobiles in countries she will never visit. This is not a matter of generosity. It is a matter of historical accountability.

The United States, which has again declined to attend the negotiations, cannot ignore its role as the world's largest historical emitter. China and other emerging economies have responsibilities too, but their obligations differ in scale and timing. They are still developing. They have a right to grow. But the first debt is owed by those who became rich first.

At COP31, delegates from developing nations are again urging wealthy countries to honour their financial commitments. Bangladesh's environment minister has made clear that poorer countries are paying the heaviest price for emissions largely generated by rich nations. The demand is not charity. It is justice. Developed countries promised to mobilise $300 billion a year by 2035 to help vulnerable nations adapt. But promises made at climate summits have a way of evaporating when the cameras leave.

Climate finance that flows into government ministries and large infrastructure projects may never reach a family in Kalabogi whose embankment has crumbled. Adaptation projects designed in capital cities may not reflect the reality of a village that must relocate every monsoon. The gap between pledge and delivery is not an accident of bureaucracy; it is a consequence of a system that treats climate finance as discretionary aid rather than an enforceable obligation.

The absence of direct victims from Kalabogi and other vulnerable parts of the world in the COP31 process is not an accident. It is a structural flaw. Official delegations include bureaucrats, ministers and negotiators. They include representatives from international organisations and NGOs. But the people who have lost their homes, their farmland and their children's futures are rarely given a seat at the table.

Their stories are reduced to anecdotes in side events—if they are mentioned at all. This matters because the solutions being discussed in Antalya will only work if they reach the people who need them most. Without the direct participation of affected communities, climate action becomes an abstraction. A negotiation conducted entirely in the language of percentages and timelines cannot capture what it means to lose a homestead to the river, to watch salt creep into the soil that once fed a family, to send children away because there is no longer land to inherit. Participation is not a courtesy; it is a condition of effective policy.

The question of responsibility extends beyond emissions to the broader structure of global inequality. Developed nations have not only contributed most to the problem—they have also shaped the global economic system that leaves countries like Bangladesh vulnerable. Trade rules, debt structures and intellectual property regimes often work against the interests of developing nations seeking to build climate resilience. When Bangladesh seeks to access green technology, it faces barriers created by wealthy nations protecting their industries.

When it seeks loans for adaptation, it faces interest rates that deepen its debt burden. The very countries that caused the climate crisis are profiting from the solutions to it. The World Bank's 2022 assessment warned that climate variability and extreme weather events could cost Bangladesh one-third of its agricultural GDP by 2050. Food security depends not only on restoring agricultural production but also on wages, functioning markets and whether families can afford to plant crops again. A new crop variety may be suitable for saline soil, but remain beyond the reach of a farmer who has exhausted his savings and cannot afford to risk another failed harvest. Technology transfer, in other words, means little if it arrives as a product to be purchased rather than a resource to be shared.

This is where developed nations must step up. They must provide grants, not loans. They must transfer technology, not hoard it. They must fund locally led adaptation, not impose top-down solutions. And they must commit to loss and damage support that reaches the most vulnerable, not just the most connected. Bangladesh should pursue stronger international commitments while also advancing specific, actionable funding proposals. Its National Adaptation Plan provides an important starting point. The task is to identify priorities that clearly demonstrate who is at risk, what interventions are needed, how much they will cost and how they will be maintained over time.

Dr Saimum Parvez, the Prime Minister's Special Assistant on Environment, Forest and Climate Change, has said Bangladesh wants to take a leadership role in advocating for the rights of climate-vulnerable nations worldwide. Speaking at COP31, he noted: "Bangladesh is not merely highlighting its own climate crisis; it wants to take a leadership role in advocating for the rights of climate-vulnerable nations worldwide." This leadership is welcome, but it cannot substitute for the action that wealthy nations must take.

Bangladesh has shown remarkable resilience and innovation—its early warning systems, community-based disaster preparedness and adaptive agricultural practices are models for the world. But resilience has limits. The people of Kalabogi cannot adapt indefinitely to repeated losses. They need real support—not loans that deepen their debt, but grants that restore their lives.

COP31, like the summits before it, will likely end with declarations and commitments. But for the families of Kalabogi, what matters is not what is signed in Antalya but what reaches their crumbling embankments, their saline fields and their displaced homes. The world must recognise that climate justice is not an abstract concept. It is about a mother in Kalabogi wondering where her children will sleep tonight after the river takes another piece of land. It is about a farmer who cannot afford to plant crops because the salt has poisoned his soil. It is about a community that has contributed almost nothing to global emissions yet bears the heaviest burden of the climate crisis.

Developed nations bear a primary responsibility in this collective endeavor. They must ensure that climate finance is accessible, support locally led adaptation efforts, and deliver loss and damage assistance in a manner that reaches those most in need. Absent these commitments, our promises risk appearing hollow. A summit that does not heed the voices of those affected by climate change would be a summit that has fallen short before it has even begun.

* The writer is a senior journalist and columnist.

* The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.